Brian Naylor

Allison Shelley
/ NPR

NPR News' Brian Naylor is a correspondent on the Washington Desk. In this role, he covers politics and federal agencies.

With more than 30 years of experience at NPR, Naylor has served as National Desk correspondent, White House correspondent, congressional correspondent, foreign correspondent, and newscaster during All Things Considered. He has filled in as host on many NPR programs, including Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, and Talk of the Nation.

During his NPR career, Naylor has covered many major world events, including political conventions, the Olympics, the White House, Congress, and the mid-Atlantic region. Naylor reported from Tokyo in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, from New Orleans following the BP oil spill, and from West Virginia after the deadly explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine.

While covering the U.S. Congress in the mid-1990s, Naylor's reporting contributed to NPR's 1996 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for political reporting.

Before coming to NPR in 1982, Naylor worked at NPR Member Station WOSU in Columbus, Ohio, and at a commercial radio station in Maine.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers received their first partial paychecks this week as the government reopened Monday after a 35-day partial shutdown.

Some 400,000 workers had been furloughed, and another 400,000 had been on the job but were not getting paid.

While the financial costs for those workers were high, the shutdown also took a heavy toll on employee morale. And it may have the longer-term impact of making it more difficult to bring new people into the government.

After an at-times heated debate, the Senate on Thursday, as expected, failed to approve either of the competing measures that would have ended the standoff over border wall funding.

If nothing else, the votes seemed to spur a flurry of efforts to find a way to end the standoff. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., announced on the Senate floor after the measures failed that he spoke with President Trump about a three-week stopgap bill to reopen the government.

The back and forth between President Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., over the partial government shutdown escalated Friday, as Pelosi said the White House leaked plans for a congressional delegation to fly commercially to Afghanistan.

On Thursday, Trump said he was revoking a military flight for the codel, suggesting Pelosi fly commercial instead.

The annual State of the Union message to Congress may be the latest casualty of the partial government shutdown.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., sent a letter to President Trump on Wednesday, suggesting a postponement until after the shutdown is over. The speech, which the president would deliver to a joint session of Congress and a national broadcast audience, was originally scheduled for Jan. 29.

One of the agencies affected by the partial government shutdown — now in its third week — is the Internal Revenue Service. While many taxpayers may not feel this is a great loss, they'll still have to pay their taxes — and the shutdown has created a good deal of uncertainty for everyone planning to file their tax returns in the coming months.

But fear not, the White House says; tax refund checks will be sent out, even though the IRS, part of the Treasury Department, is for the most part closed.

A closed-door briefing for congressional leaders in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday failed to resolve any issues between Democrats and the Trump administration over funding for border security.

Picking a fight with the leader of his party the day before being sworn in, former GOP presidential candidate and incoming freshman Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, writes that President Trump "has not risen to the mantle of the office."

President Trump has said that if lawmakers do not reach a deal, that the looming shutdown could last a very long time - his words. Well, what would the consequences of that be? NPR's Brian Naylor reports.

A partial government shutdown beginning at 12:01 a.m. ET Saturday looks certain after both the House and Senate adjourned until noon on Saturday without an agreement on spending acceptable to President Trump that would also pass in the Senate.

The House passed a short-term funding bill Thursday night that includes the money for additional border security President Trump wants — but the measure is unlikely to pass the Senate, raising the likelihood of a partial government shutdown that would begin Friday night at midnight.

The threat of a partial government shutdown this weekend may be diminishing.

The Senate passed a short-term measure Wednesday night to keep the federal government open into 2019. The House is expected to take up the bill on Thursday. Funding currently expires at midnight on Friday.

You might want to have a Plan B ... or at least bring your own trail maps.

While the Grand Canyon, along with the rest of the national park system, is expected to remain open in the case of a government shutdown, visitor centers at the facilities probably won't. And some iconic sites, including the Statue of Liberty, may be closed altogether if the park service follows past practices.

The U.S. Capitol is host to a hushed stream of mourners Tuesday, paying their respects to former President George H.W. Bush, whose flag-draped casket, attended by a military honor guard, lies in the center of the building's rotunda.

President Trump, who has frequently railed against the U.S. news media and reporters, tweeted last week there should be, as he put it, a "Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are, GREAT!"

It turns out there is such a worldwide network run by the U.S. It's Voice of America.

President Franklin Roosevelt created the VOA during World War II to broadcast behind enemy lines what its current director, Amanda Bennett, said was "truthful news about the war, in contrast with Nazi propaganda."

An Air Force jet, designated "Special Air Mission 41," landed at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, D.C., Monday afternoon, carrying the body of former President George Herbert Walker Bush.

The casket containing the remains of the 41st president was then transported to the U.S. Capitol rotunda, where Bush will lie in state until Wednesday morning's state funeral at Washington National Cathedral.

In a rare moment of direct criticism, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rebuked President Trump on Wednesday for the president's description of a federal judge who ruled against his asylum policy as "an Obama judge." Within hours, the president fired back on Twitter, launching an unusual conflict between the executive and judicial branches.

It used to be you would sign on the bottom line, whether it was a check or a credit card receipt or even a love letter. But the art of the signature has become less important and less practiced, and that has meant less certainty for elections officials in several states who are still counting votes from the Nov. 6 midterm elections.

Those officials are trying verify that the signatures required on mail-in, provisional, absentee and military ballots match the signature that voters have on file with the board of elections.

It's five days since the midterm elections, and the outcomes of a number of races remain in question. Several House races and a three Senate seats are still up in the air, along with two high-profile governors' races in Georgia and Florida.

In an extraordinarily combative news conference Wednesday after voters delivered him a rebuke by giving control of the House to Democrats, President Trump went after Republicans, Democrats and the media.

He mocked Republican candidates who distanced themselves from him, chided a reporter for asking a "racist question" and walked away from the lectern at one point, as an aide tried to wrest a microphone out of a reporter's hands.

On a blustery fall afternoon in Jay, Maine, Jared Golden stands at the gate of the Verso Paper Mill shaking hands with workers at the end of their shift. The workers — mostly men, wearing steel-toe boots, some still in their safety goggles — greet him politely before rushing off to their waiting pickups.